


Auld Acquaintance

by AJfanfic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Activist Hermione Granger, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Grimmauld Place Summer School, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Professor Harry Potter, Severus Snape Friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25551295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJfanfic/pseuds/AJfanfic
Summary: McGonagall cleans out the headmaster's chambers, after the war. Harry realizes he's done fighting. Hermione realizes she isn't. Neville writes the book. They begin to heal.An alternative epilogue.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minerva McGonagall & Harry Potter, Minerva McGonagall & Severus Snape
Comments: 10
Kudos: 90





	Auld Acquaintance

They count their dead, or rather, they try to. It takes time to clear away the rubble. 

Minerva cleans out the headmaster’s quarters. It takes her days to disassemble the wards. Silencing; to keep noise out, and to keep those inside from being heard. Defensive; a mix of known spells and ones that felt uniquely like Severus. It’s exceptional magic. She remembers suddenly that she had helped build the foundation of it. It has been years since she thought of Severus as her student, but he had been. She had known him as a child. Minerva wonders how long he’s lived with wards like this.

She finds vials of dreamless sleep and pours them out before she can be tempted. She finds other vials too, ones she doesn’t recognize, on the table beside the bed and she pours those out too. Her face is reflected back at her in the glassware and Minerva feels old, and she feels guilty for it.

There are lists of names, and places, and reasons, and the people responsible. Minerva writes letters and she doesn’t get many replies. She didn’t expect to. How do you reply to a letter like that? But she sends them anyway because she had sat in front of that radio, counting how many names she knew, how many she had taught, for far too many nights to let others go on not knowing. She sends the list to Kingsley when she’s done and hopes it will help.

There are robes in the wardrobe and ingredients in the small cupboard, the ones he wasn’t willing to risk leaving in his stores. Minerva hopes that his house might have been more a home to him than these chambers. She hopes, selfishly, that he left some record of the man she had known.

Harry turns up at Minerva’s door and says: “I can’t be an auror.” She brings him inside and makes him a cup of tea, and she offers him a job. Her wife makes dinner and by the time they are done, Minerva has run for a quill and parchment because she is headmaster now. Albus was a great man, and he was a friend. Minerva knows that does not mean he was always a good man. Harry finally begins to believe, sitting in her kitchen, gesturing wildly, excited for the first time in a long time, that maybe, it is okay for him to accept that as well. They draw up outlines for an improved muggle studies curriculum. Harry shares his lesson plans from the DA, and the things he’d like to work on. Minerva promises to help him over the summer. Summer. Harry asks about letting students stay over the break. So many of them now have nowhere to go. He suggests Grimmauld Place.

“I’d have to clean it out, go through all the Black’s old stuff,” he says. Minerva can see trepidation on his face and knows he hasn’t been back for a long time.

“We’ll give you a hand, if you’d like,” says Felicity, and Harry nods, relieved.

“I will understand if you would rather not,” Minerva says, “but Severus left me his home at Spinner’s Lane. I haven’t yet gone, but would like the company if you wanted to join me.”

Harry thinks about it for a moment, and agrees. He knows so little of the man even now that, painful as it might be, he needs to go.

Severus left no record. There is nothing that might have compromised his position. Harry leaves her the memories he’d given him. It takes her a long time to watch them, but eventually she does, and she cries then. Bitterly, she doubts that Albus did. She wonders why she never did anything when Severus was a student. Minerva looks across the sitting room of Grimmauld Place to see Harry offering chocolate to a little girl with big wet eyes and wonders why she never did anything for him either. She promises to do better for the children in her care now.

* * *

Hermione bruises her hand against someone’s aid’s face, and she bruises that too. She doesn’t remember what they’d said exactly. Something about “what a shame that so many were killed without a trial,” like it had been their fault. Like she should feel any remorse for the things she had done. Like she should condemn Molly for killing Bellatrix, or any of the others. She cries and claims it's the pain of her hand. The scars along it ache. She was not wrong. She sleeps poorly and claims she doesn’t remember her dreams. They were not wrong.

She goes to Luna, and they write for her father’s paper about all of the things that still aren’t better now that the Light has won the war. It’s just the two of them in the little rebuilt house over the hill, until it isn’t. Until Hermione has her own office at the ministry and is working with Kingsley to reform Azkaban. She sees an end to non-human slavery and writes scroll after scroll about the wizarding justice system until she sees change there too. Hermione spends her summers at Grimmauld Place and watches the laughter beat back the shadows that threaten to reclaim their place in the halls.

* * *

Harry does not write a book. Neither do Hermione or Ron. There are a few interviews, with the journalists too stubborn to avoid. Neville writes it, with Luna and Hannah. The cover scrolls like ticker tape with name after name. He tells the story of Lavender Brown and Colin Creevy. He tells Vincent Crabbe’s story too. There’s a chapter for each of them, every student who’d fought, the living and the dead. Cedric’s chapter is first. It’s a long book. It’s the most read book that year, and the year after.

Dennis sends him his brother’s photographs, from before. The great hall full and laughing, clear blue sky over breakfast and stars shining over dinner. The Gryffindor common room, blurry faces grinning as they returned from break. The sorting hat on Dennis’s head. Hagrid’s hut. Charity Burbage. The astronomy tower. Neville cried when he got the package and he uses them all. The book is simply called  _ Our War _ . When it is done, he sends copies to everyone in it, or their families. He walks outside and looks at the barren beds outside the Three Broomsticks. Neville rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.

* * *

There is a memorial every year by the Black Lake. They had all gone that first year, they felt they needed to. It hadn’t helped. Now, they have dinner at The Three Broomsticks a week before the anniversary. They visit graves throughout the year, on birthdays and holidays and when they feel like they need to. Ron and Hermione, and Harry and Ginny remember in their own ways; they take the kids camping. Harry paces circles around the edge of the tent platform casting wards. Around the fire, they tell the kids stories about their better days traveling, the haircuts, and exploring Grimmauld Place, and the breakfasts from cliff tops with views they didn’t appreciate at the time. Ginny doesn’t tell her stories. She saves those for when they’re older. There are so many stories to tell them when they're older, and so many stories they’ll never tell. The four of them sit up late into the night and they don’t feel the need to pretend they aren’t keeping watch.

There isn’t quite forgiveness but there is understanding. It’s sympathy, yes, but more than that it’s compassion because it’s not easy. It’s never easy, even when they are in love, when the one waking up screaming is their best friend, but they learn to live with it. They learn to be gentle again. They begin to trust that they have the time to take things slow.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to why-can't-turtles-dance for editing <3


End file.
